Dr. Tanelian's Weblog

HEALTH is HAPPINESS

This weekend I witnessed what others and I never thought we would actually see; the marriage of two loving, very vital people, at an age when we imagine our own days will have come to pass. They danced the night away!

Congratulations Virginia and Edward!

Clearly, my vantage point on life was narrow and now has been expanded to encompass the words of George Elliot (1819-1880) as she wrote,

To Be One With Each Other
What greater thing is there for two human souls
than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen
each other in all labor, to minister to each other in all sorrow,
to share with each other in all gladness,
to be one with each other in the
silent unspoken memories?

In celebration of this jubilant marriage and testimonial to HEALTH as has been so wisely said for centuries, Health Is Our Only True Wealth. I hope that their wedding serves as a beacon to guide everyone, as they grow older. Let us all do ourselves and our loved ones a favor by staying healthy so that we may enjoy our families and they us, for many more years than we have ever expected.

Darrell Tanelian

The Italian Lifestyle

I just returned from bicycling in southern Italy. What struck me most was the incredibly rugged terrain and how civilization had flourished in these regions for centuries. We were in Amalphi. Capri and Puglia all coastal and very rocky with many steep vertical cities and coasts.

I marveled at how these regions produced so much fine produce, wine and olive oil. Farming these regions is a testament to the people’s outstanding physical condition and prowess. Imagine growing up in these regions in which your ancestors flourished for thousands of years. Naturally the most-fit individuals were selected-for over the centuries and their offspring still farm these regions today. The terrain is so steep in Capri and Amalphi that tractors and most animals are nonfunctional for farming, yet man has become so conditioned that I even saw 80 year old men and women tilling and harvesting their vertical fields.

The foods they grow and eat are 100’s of thousands of years old and include many connexin-enhancing molecules. We call this the Mediterranean diet today, but it originally began as the connexin-enhancing diet.

We wonder why these people live so long, are so fit, and delay disease? There is no wonder – It is Lifestyle- not only an individuals lifestyle, but their parents lifestyle and the lifestyle of many generations!

Darrell L. Tanelian, M.D., Ph.D.